


Rhythm of the War Drums

by valiantprincex



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Clone AU, Gen, Guardian Angels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 20:23:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5679532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valiantprincex/pseuds/valiantprincex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Who is she?” Helena asks, but she already knows the answer: she’s <b><em>yours.</em></b></p><p>“I could break her,” she murmurs – Helena is crouched in the shadows of the maternity ward, and watches as the child is cut free, lifted, placed in the arms of a woman whose hands shake when they touch. The baby screams and Helena grins a smile full of fangs. “What’s her <b><em>name</em></b>?”</p><p>AU where Helena is Rachel Duncan's guardian angel</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhythm of the War Drums

**Author's Note:**

> So I was listening to “Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of The War Drums” by a Perfect Circle and at one point the singer starts yelling “go back to sleep" like multiple times in a row and I thought they said "don’t touch me”, so, obviously, I instantly thought of Rachel Duncan and well here we are. 
> 
> I present: AU where Helena is Rachel’s guardian angel. Clone au. All the events of canon happen as they do in canon, and if you get tripped up over plot inconsistencies (ex: how did all these events fall into place when Helena is Rachel’s guardian angel and clearly not available for clone murdering and sestre bonding time) just imagine me running around waving my arms in the air screaming
> 
> Super big thanks to @writingcello who helped me when this fic was just a baby, and @motherofscorpions for giving me an awesome beta!

1.

“Who is she?” Helena asks, but she already knows the answer: _she’s_ _ **yours.**_

“I could break her,” she murmurs – Helena is crouched in the shadows of the maternity ward, and watches as the child is cut free, lifted, placed in the arms of a woman whose hands shake when they touch. The baby screams and Helena grins a smile full of fangs. “What’s her _**name**_?”

 

2.

The first time Rachel sees her Rachel is nine years old and the doctor’s office is cold, all white-walled with it’s steel surfaces glinting dully under the fluorescent lights. She's sitting perched on the edge of the table, legs too short to reach the stool she’s been given. Her fingers dig half moons into the flimsy paper underneath her.

When Rachel looks up her eyes widen for half a second, before she returns her gaze to the floor. Silence, save for the soft ripping of paper underneath her fingers. She looks up again.

“Who are you?” Rachel asks. Her voice is soft, low. “Am I dreaming?”

“No,” says Helena.

“Yes” says Helena.

“Maybe?” Rachel asks, and Helena smiles, a grin full of fangs.

“Who are you,” she asks again, crossing her arms in front of her. “Why are you here?”

“You,” Helena says. “You’re _**mine**_.”

And then the doctor knocks, and Helena slips into shadow. She watches still, she’s bound to this child until death takes one or both of them. She wonders which will happen first – angels don’t die, angel’s can’t die, but Helena is _not–_

> (The doctor’s hands are cold and light and Rachel shudders at her touch, and Helena thinks again of breaking. The doctor’s neck is pale and Helena can see the veins there, and when she closes her eyes she can hear the low song of her heartbeat. It would be quick – no spray of blood unless Helena wanted it, just eyes-turned-dead and the sound of a body against the floor.
> 
> But no. She can’t – she can’t interfere. That’s not her _**job**_. That’s not her job and Rachel is _**hers**_ so Helena twines herself  into Rachel’s shadow in some sort of comfort. She thinks it might help – but she’s scared to touch, really touch. Rachel’s bones are still bird-fragile, her pulse beating close to the surface, all too easy to cut.)

_not anymore._

The second time Rachel sees her she’s standing at her mirror, hands fumbling over a bottle of mascara. She could ask someone for help but – no. _No_. She raises the little brush to her eyelash once again, and her shaking fingers try. She frowns, pulls back and wipes the makeup away – it's bad, bad, she needs it better. Her hands are shaking, and when she glances again at the mirror she sees the shadow of a woman sitting cross legged on her bedspread.

When Rachel’s eyes find hers, Helena grins at her with a mouth full of fangs. Rachel can see her, in the mirror, her limbs all tangled, head resting on one arm. Rachel turns quickly, and her bed is empty. When she looks back at the mirror, the woman is still standing there.

“Who are you?” Rachel demands. “Why are you here?” _I know you_ , Rachel thinks. _Where do I know you from?_ Helena laughs at this, a soft chuckle that tears from her throat with a wet sound. She can’t hear all of Rachel, but Helena knows her well enough to know her mind.

(She has to.)

(Rachel is _**hers**_.)

“You need help,” Helena says. She stands and walks over to Rachel, thinks about resting her chin on Rachel’s shoulder, but Rachel is still too fragile, and Helena knows all the ways for bones to break. Rachel can feel her there, cold and hot and like a fire burning, but when she looks there is nothing – _no one_ – there. She looks back in the mirror and finds the woman’s eyes. Helena feels the heat radiating off Rachel’s skin, blood and bone and pumping heart, alive, “You need help,” Helena says simply. “And you're _**mine**_.”

“I don’t belong to anyone,” Rachel spits. Helena cocks her head and a thin smile curves at her lip.

“ _ **You belong to me.**_ ” The words fill her, coiling up from the depth of Helena’s being.

“Who are you,” Rachel asks, and her voice is shaking. “I _know_ you. I– I’ve seen you before.”

“Helena,” Helena says and her mouth is full of fangs and her back aches for wings. “ _ **Helena**_.”

“How do you know me?” Rachel asks. Helena wonders why she’s not more surprised. Usually (usually) they are scared, but Rachel looks at Helena with a burning in her eyes. Usually they want to run-away, but Rachel tilts back her chin and stares directly into Helena’s eyes. “How do you know me,” Rachel says again, and this time it’s a demand.

“You’re _**mine**_ ,” Helena says, and in that word is a child’s lifetime, a burden etched into the Helena’s flesh. A _life_.

“No,” Rachel argues, “what does that _mean_?”

Helena cocks her head, and considers. Rachel’s skin is too-thin and Helena can see her heartbeat working there, can see the delicate makeup of her body and knows all the ways to break it. She reaches out one hand and finally rests in onto Rachel’s skin. It’s the first time – the first time since forever, really, _forever_ , and Helena can feel a thousand years of _**mine**_ coursing through her and into Rachel.

Rachel jolts, and Helena holds firm. She wonders, briefly, if this is the right time – if she should have waited, but it’s all too late for that.

“Oh,” Rachel says, finally. “ _Oh_.” She turns, and sees Helena standing. When she looks back into the mirror Helena is gone.

“You see?” Helena murmurs, and Rachel blinks, and Helena is on her bed again, legs drawn up close to her. “You’re _**mine**_ , and you need help.” Helena doesn’t know how to use mascara, but she wills Rachel's’ hand to steady, and it does.

When the door knocks, and Marion Bowles steps quickly into the room Helena considers her, wonders if she is worthy. Rachel’s eyes turn hard as stone and Helena decides: _**enemy**_.

But she keeps her hands from breaking. Not _yet_.

 

3.

Helena knows Rachel down to her core. When Rachel was eight and the fire destroyed her parent’s laboratory, her family, everything she had – Helena was there. Helena was there to see the ashes and Helena was there to see her cry, and Helena was there when Rachel stopped knowing how. Helena still thinks about telling her the truth, now – _your father lives, your mother is alive, nothing really was lost in the fire_. But that’s not her job, is it? (Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it?) Her job is _**Rachel**_.

But she supposes, now, that it would be unfair to tell her. Rachel doesn’t know how to cry anymore and she thinks her parents are dead and she lives in a room full of pink frilly things that she wants to rip to shreds, and oh. It would be unfair to tell her it is all for nothing, wouldn’t it?

Rachel wants to rip the room to shreds and Helena’s hands itch – she could do it, burn DYAD to the ground with a single wish, but that’s not her _**job**_ , and Rachel is hers. They gave her a child. They took her wings and gave her a child, told her: she’s _**yours**_. They gave her a _child_. They gave her a creature fragile and beautiful as glass and told Helena not to break her, and when Rachel is angry Helena’s back burns, her scars where they ripped her wings away.

When Rachel was born Helena tried to love her. She’s a hungry thing, all gaping maw and empty, empty, but Helena looked at the child and they told she she is yours and Helena felt: nothing. Helena felt nothing as the laboratory burned and Helena sat crouched on Rachel’s bed, Rachel’s unknowing eyes closed beside her. They gave her a child and Helena though: _hungry_ , her mouth full of fangs.

The first person Helena hates is Aldous. Rachel can’t hate him – not yet, not _yet_ , but Helena looks at him and wishes she still had her wings. If she still had them oh, oh she could take Rachel and fly, and they could run, together. The first time Helena hates a person is the first time she feels anything other than hungry.

They gave her a child.

Helena hates a lot of people for Rachel, because that’s her _**job**_ , isn’t it? She hates them before Rachel knows how and she keeps on hating them as the emotion blooms in Rachel’s mind and finds a home there. She sees the way they look at Rachel like Rachel is an object and Helena wants to rip them apart.

She goes back-and-forth about hating Rachel’s parents. Helena doesn’t know if that’s part of her job – Rachel loves them, doesn’t she? But Helena doesn’t really know that, either. She doesn’t know where they are, only knows that they are alive and that Rachel sleeps in a room that she hates that always smells of antiseptic.

Helena remembers how Rachel’s room smelled before – like a mix of roses and woodsmoke. Rachel liked to press her feet into the floor and feel the grain of the floors, but she doesn't remember that now. Helena remembers for her – that’s part of her job too, after all.

And Rachel grows up and Rachel grows tall and Rachel is hardly a child, anymore.

 

4.

Rachel is fifteen and Helena stands at her shoulder and tells her to live. Rachel spits “No one owns me,” and Helena wishes for wings and _makes_ her live. She can feel the hate broiling under Rachel’s skin, now, all red-hot and burning; Helena still knows all the ways to break her but Rachel pretends she is unbreakable. Helena wonders if that’s _good_ – but then again, her job isn’t to make Rachel good.

“Why do you follow me?” Rachel asks. She’s seventeen years old and lying on her bed, Helena perched on her desk.

“It’s my _**job**_ ,” Helena says simply, and Rachel looks back down at her book.

“Why me?” She’s looking up again and Helena sees fire burning in her eyes, almost feels proud because of it.

Helena shrugs. “I don’t know,” she answers, and it’s true. Rachel is just one of many identical little girls and Helena sometimes thinks she could have been given any of them. Helena doesn't know exactly how many and she doesn't care, because they gave her _**Rachel**_ and she can’t care about any of the others.  

Rachel is eighteen and cutting her hair in the bathroom sink and Helena is telling her no, Rachel stop, Rachel they will get mad-at-you _Rachel_. It falls to her jawline in a hard rough line and she dyes it peroxide blonde, and the liquid burns her hands.

“You should not have done that,” Helena says; the words tear from her before she realizes it and her mouth tastes like bitter ash.

“Shut _up_ ,” Rachel hisses, and her teeth are clenched and her knuckles are white and her hair is scattered across the floor in clumps. Helena can feel the hate in waves, each one hitting her, and she remembers that she does not have wings. “Why don’t you leave,” Rachel yells and her hands are clenched in fists and her nails dig into her palms and blood hits the air, all holy. “Leave me _alone_ , Helena.”

“No,” Helena says,

> (When Rachel is fifteen she wanted to die and Helena makes her live; Rachel fights her, screaming, sobs tearing her open for the first time in years.
> 
> Helena seizes her, and Rachel’s heart pumps wild at her touch. “I was there the day you were born and I will be there the day you die,” Helena yells and her teeth are fangs and her back feels like scars made fresh. Her hands are on Rachel’s shoulders and she can feel it, everything, and she reaches inside of Rachel’s mind and shuts her down.
> 
> Rachel shudders and her eyes close and she slumps into Helena’s arms. Helena’s scars burn like a blessing and she lays Rachel down onto her bed – it’s her _**job**_ , after all, and she tucks the covers around Rachel’s sleeping form she whispers: “I saw you born and I will see you die you are not dying today.”)

“ _ **No**_.”

 

5.

Helena learns to love Rachel like pulling teeth.

 

6.

They give her a new room when she turns sixteen and Helena remembers when Rachel was eight and had a room filled with the smell of flowers and woodsmoke and books spilling out of bookshelves. _Rachel_ doesn’t remember though, and when DYAD gives her a new room they let her pick the colors; Rachel picks sheets as dark as midnight and every surface is sharp and smooth. Helena sits on top of her new dresser and runs her hands along the edge. It reminds her of a razor blade, and she watches Rachel and rests her chin on her hands.

Helena doesn’t like Rachel’s new room much. It’s empty and too-cold at night and Rachel shivers under the covers until Helena makes her sleep. Rachel likes it though, and so Helena sits and waits and watches and steadies Rachel’s shaking hands.

Rachel turns twenty and she holds herself like a blade, sharp and blood-seeking. They give her an apartment two blocks away from DYAD. They give her a boy too – a man. He follows her there and Helena thinks about killing him – she wants to, but that isn’t her _**job**_ and so she sits on the top of Rachel’s dresser and hisses at him.

And Rachel is kissing him and her eyes flick to Helena and holds her gaze – she doesn’t want to, but she wills Rachel’s hate to sleep and twines herself into Rachel’s shadow. DYAD wants Rachel to love him and DYAD holds Rachel’s life in it’s belly and so Helena wills Rachel’s hate to fade keeps her hands close together.

She could break them.

But not _yet_.

Rachel draws men like honeybees, now, and her raw hunger grows – and Helena doesn’t know if she should be proud of that either. She calls them snakes and Rachel smiles a thin smile and keeps bringing them home. Helena wants to rip them apart but Rachel is no longer a child and Rachel can pro-tect herself.

 

7.

When Helena sees Sarah Manning she thinks something went _wrong_. She thinks that they chose _wrong_ , Helena looks at Sarah Manning and thinks: _I love_ _ **you**_ _,_ and the feeling comes as easy as breathing. She feels guilty, guilt like wings-long-gone – she’s not supp-os-ed to care about anyone other than Rachel because Rachel is _**hers**_ , and the rest are. Not. (Helena sees Sarah and feels hurt grip in her chest and she loves Sarah easy as falling.)

Rachel sees her first. Rachel has seen her face a lot of times, in a lot of shoes, but Helena has never cared about the other girls. Helena can’t bring herself to care – they're Rachel but-not, and Helena could-not _-should_ -not care about people who are not- _ **hers**_ , until now. Until Sarah.

But Rachel sees her first, and Rachel feels hate all too akin with hunger.

“Make a deal with her,” Helena urges, and her voice drips with delight and her heels bang bang on side of Rachel’s desk. Rachel is looking at the file DYAD gave her and she is angry, but Helena can think of nothing but _hungry_.

 

8.

When Ethan Duncan comes back from the dead Helena can’t keep Rachel from knowing.

“Did you know?” Rachel asks, _after_ , and her voice is flat and dead as Ethan’s suicide. She whirls on Helena and demands again, “ _Did you know?_ ”

“No,” Helena says, and the lie comes easy. “He’s not my _**job**_.”

 

9.

Helena had wings once, but they were ripped from her shoulders in a whirl of fire and when she fell they gave her a child.

Rachel isn’t a child anymore, and now she walks with one eye burned silver.

> (When Sarah Manning takes Rachel’s eye Helena screams and her voice wrenches through Rachel’s mind. She’s never – had never – will never – has never – Rachel has never been hurt like _this_ , oh Rachel has been hurt and she has been scarred and wounded but this is different, and Helena feels her own eye fill with pain.
> 
> They’re both reeling and Helena can’t see Rachel, for the first time since the beginning Helena can’t see her. And Sarah is running and Sarah is gone but Rachel is gone too, and Helena pulls herself out of her stupor and wills Rachel to live, again. She could kill Sarah Manning with one swipe of her wings but she doesn’t have wings, anymore. Helena wants to rip Sarah Manning apart for hurting Rachel – she wonders why she ever wanted Sarah, but even still she can’t shake the feeling – and she could have stopped this. Helena whispered in Rachel’s ear and told her to made a _deal_ with Sarah Manning and now Rachel is bleeding on the operating room floor.
> 
> She should have stopped this.
> 
> She could have told Rachel to send a bullet through Sarah Manning’s head the first time she saw her but she: didn’t, she said ‘ _let’s make a deal’,_ and now Rachel is dying.
> 
> It’s harder this time but she seizes Rachel’s consciousness between her smoke-fingers and she wills Rachel to live. Helena holds onto Rachel as best she can until DYAD finds her and the doctors swarm like maggots on a rotting corpse. She brings them, sends her conscious splitting through the halls of DYAD and thinks _**help**_ , demands _**come**_ , feels their bodies arch and break with the pressure of her desperation – oh she’s not _supposed_ to not-supposed-to-interfere, she’s not _supposed_ to, but Rachel is dying and this is her _**job**_. And this is her _**job**_ , isn’t it? _Isn’t it?_ _ **ISN’T IT**_? They are too-weak, all of them, brittle bones and weak minds but Helena sends her conscious splintering into the halls of DYAD and screams for someone to _**come.**_ And they do, stumbling-crawling-bleeding they come and rush to Rachel’s side and Helena thinks: good. She holds Rachel’s mind in the palm of her hands but Rachel’s body is dying, and Helena can do: nothing.
> 
> _Shecan’tdoanything_ she can’t _do_ _**anything**_ at all but pace in the shadows of the operating room and hiss at the doctors and wish to rip them apart. They’re so fragile and she can see their skin and blood and bone underneath their thin blue scrubs, and she wants to break them just for _touching_ Rachel – but Helena can do _nothing_ and they can, so all she does is pace. She paces the operating room and steadies the hands of the surgeons and takes away the nurses’ exhaustion – she’s not supposed to touch them she’s not supposed to in-terf-ere but Rachel is dying and this is her _**job**_.
> 
> The room that Rachel is taken too has white-grey tiles and white-blue curtains and Helena curls at the foot of her bed and waits for her to wake.
> 
> Helena’s scars burn and her hands ache, ache – she was supposed to protect Rachel that is her _job_ that is her _**job**_ , but Rachel is dying and Rachel lies still in a hospital room and Helena holds her consciousness and pulls her back bit by bit.)

They give her an eye.

“I can’t see you with it,” Rachel whispers, and Helena rests her head on Rachel’s shoulder.

“Do not worry,” Helena murmurs, “I will always be with you.” She feels Rachel shivering, and she wills her hands to still – and she remembers, all-of-a-sudden, that Rachel is human. She hasn’t thought this in years, really, but Rachel’s bones are bird-fragile and Helena knows all the ways to break her.  DYAD knows them too. Helena wonders if she should have torn it down the first time it touched Rachel – but she didn't, and now it is too-late.

(The first time DYAD took Rachel, Helena did not care and now it is too _late_.)

They gave her a child and Rachel couldn’t see her for _years_ , Helena watched and waited and protected and learned to love her like pulling teeth and she did it for _years_ before Rachel could see her. She doesn’t know why that is, but finding out the why’s of it isn’t her _**job**_ , is it, and now Rachel can only see her with one eye. The other one stares, pupil fixed and it’s iris is burned silver and Helena’s never seen a human with an eye like that before, only angels – but Helena doesn’t have wings any-more and Rachel is a _child_.

Was.

“It doesn’t matter,” Helena says as she tucks a lock of hair behind Rachel’s ear. Rachel closes her eyes – her hair is long now, Rachel hasn’t had the time to get it cut – “You don't need to see me.” Helena presses her cheek against Rachel’s shoulder and when Rachel opens her eyes Helena is gone, but she can still feel the warmth of Helena’s skin.

And then she blinks and Helena is curled in the chair next to Rachel’s bed and she’s grinning, her mouth full of fangs.

 

1.

 _ **Rachel**_.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't fret precious I'm here, step away from the window  
> Go back to sleep  
> Safe from pain and truth and choice and other poison devils,  
> See, they don't give a fuck about you, like I do. 
> 
> Count the bodies like sheep  
> Count the bodies like sheep
> 
> Counting bodies like sheep  
> To the rhythm of the war drums  
> ~ A Perfect Circle
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! If you liked, a kudo and/or comment would make my day!!


End file.
